The crowd was, to put it charitably, of a certain age. It was largely the same bunch of aging punks I see at most of the rare gigs that tempt me out of the house – something that I find comforting and a bit pathetic at the same time, and I fully allow that I’m implicated in the blanket description of a “crowd of aging punks.” (…)
In front of English crowds, Clarke has acknowledged that he got his first big break, pre-punk, from Bernard Manning, back when he was doing the northern working man’s club circuit. I doubt if a young crowd would have responded to Clarke’s humour as happily; it wasn’t anything like the “racist” material that made working class comedians like Manning both successful and reviled, but it was a product of a culture where everybody is a target for a jab or swipe, the teller included.
